


First, Best, and Only

by Carbonpixel



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Beta!Demyx, Dubious Consent, Emotional idiots, First Time, Fisting, M/M, No Penile Penetration, Omega hormones, Omega!Zexion, Roommates, Unexpected Heat, mpreg mention, the dubcon is light but still there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbonpixel/pseuds/Carbonpixel
Summary: Demyx has a paper due in twelve hours. It won't take long to finish—maybe a couple of hours of solid writing at his desk.His plans go awry when he finds Zexion stuck in bed, mid-heat. Writing an essay is no trouble for Demyx, but dealing with his roommate's estrous cycle is less cut-and-dry.
Relationships: Demyx/Zexion (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	First, Best, and Only

“Is… everything okay?” Demyx stood in the middle of the room, in the narrow pathway between the two beds set against opposite walls. He clutched his laptop at his side and eyed the desks in the far corner. If he could cross the room, make it to his desk, set out all of his notes and outlines in a half-organized spread, and finally plug his computer into the outlet just above the floor molding, he could start writing his essay. The essay that was due in twelve hours. The one he had put off in favor of practicing the opening riff of Coheed and Cambria's “Welcome Home.” _That_ essay.

From under a comforter two sizes too big for the twin bed it covered, Zexion squirmed. He practically growled in response. _“Never better.”_

Demyx’s feet refused to budge. He found himself unable to pass by Zexion’s bed with his roommate inexplicably cocooned in the scientifically-accurate molecule diagrams printed on his blanket. “Are you sure? You sound like you’re—”

Zexion’s head snapped in Demyx’s direction, in the form of a lump moving underneath the oversized comforter. “Demyx,” he snarled, _“get out of here._ Go to the library or something. If you don’t already know where it is, I trust that someone can help you find it.”

“Hey, I _do_ happen to know where the library is, and for your information, I have a paper to write.” Demyx scuffed a tiny step forward, inching toward the desks. “It’s due tonight. I’ll put on some headphones and keep typing away until it’s done. You won’t even notice I’m here.”

 _“No!”_ One of Zexion’s hands shot out from under the comforter, catching Demyx by the wrist. His palm was slick and clammy, and his grip threatened to reignite Demyx’s carpal tunnel.

Demyx yelped. “Hey, what are you—” He threw his arm to the side to shake Zexion’s hold before he would have to start wearing his ratty-Velcro wrist braces to bed again. Though Zexion’s grip held firm through Demyx’s thrashing, his comforter showed a distinct lack of resolve. It fell to the floor in one weighted _thwump_.

Sans protective cover, Zexion lay prone on the bed, one knee bent at an angle and one arm tucked under his forehead. Demyx could see fresh beads of sweat pool in the dips of Zexion’s naked, flushed frame, glistening and shimmering like glitter mixed in fine-grained sand. His shoulders heaved with every mouthy, beleaguered breath. He looked up at Demyx through the damp hair strewn across his face, pieced apart by perspiration and sebum and worried fingers. His grip on Demyx’s wrist never wavered. “You weren’t supposed to see this,” he said. 

“Oh.” Demyx’s throat went dry. “You’re, um. You’re—”

“Indisposed at the moment, yes.” 

Demyx watched a tiny rivulet of sweat trace its way between Zexion’s shoulder blades before falling off to the side. _A heat._ Zexion, the human calculator, the man who had once told Demyx that “the energy the average person spends on trivial pursuits amounts to a net loss of human innovation on the global scale,” was going into heat. Images of the grainy sex education documentaries Demyx had seen in his high school health class whirled behind his eyes. “I... could put your blanket back on you, if you want.”

Zexion’s hand dropped to the floor. “No, it’s fine,” he said, his entire body sagging into the mattress. “There’s no point in performative modesty at this point.”

The laptop weighed at Demyx’s side, a reminder of his looming essay deadline. “I—I can go,” he sputtered, while he pointed at the door with his free hand. “If you want privacy, which I _totally_ understand, because it looks like you’ve got something personal going on—”

With a sharp breath, Zexion cut him off. “Demyx, _please._ Shut up. Bring me a water bottle. I put a few in the refrigerator this morning.”

Demyx recalled the monotone voiceover from one of the more memorable sex ed videos, playing it over in his mind as he rummaged through the mini-fridge next to the desks. _When in heat, the Omega will experience increased tactile sensitivity, a heightened sense of smell, and a compulsory sex drive. The individual may seek to alleviate these symptoms through skin-to-skin contact with another person, masturbation, or partnered sex._

“Oh, _here_ they are,” he said to himself, when he found a cluster of six plastic water bottles with the letter “Z” written on the caps stored in the fridge’s door shelves. He took two bottles from the edge of the shelf and took them to Zexion. _It is not uncommon for the Omega to experience shifts in behavior during this time,_ the voiceover continued. _The individual may become more timid or more brazen when in heat, depending on the availability of potential mates._

Zexion snatched one of the bottles from Demyx’s hands. “Took you long enough.” He downed half of it while propped on one elbow, then set it within easy reach on the floor. “Be careful not to knock that one over. I’m going to need it.”

 _Mental health symptoms, such as increased desire for companionship, aversion to nonviable sexual partners, and loss of emotional inhibition are also common during this time._ Demyx placed the second bottle next to the first one on the floor. “I can still go. I mean, if you want to be alone. I get it. Extenuating circumstances and stuff.”

Zexion shook his head as he pushed himself to sit on his knees. He moved slowly, as though his muscles would snap if he stretched them too quickly. “Stay or go, it doesn’t matter. You’re not an Alpha, so it won’t really make a difference.” 

“But you were just telling me to go away. Wasn’t that what you wanted?” Demyx pursed his lips together and willed himself to look away from Zexion’s hairless chest and violent erection. He settled on staring at the space between Zexion’s eyebrows. 

Zexion scowled and crossed his arms, his cheeks turning a shade of light pink. “Do whatever you want. Just don’t look at me like that.”

Demyx looked back at the desks in the corner. His own faced away from Zexion’s bed. With a set of headphones and a can-do attitude, he could easily work on his essay while giving his roommate a reasonable amount of privacy. Probably. He hoped. “In that case, I’d better get to work,” Demyx said, sliding into his desk chair and opening his laptop on the desk. “Yell if you need anything.”

* * *

Halfway through the process of peppering extra details into the leaner paragraphs of his essay, Demyx heard his name called from behind the heavy bass beats that populated his studying playlist. He lifted the side of his headphones off of one ear to investigate. “Zexion? Did you need something?”

In the absence of music, the sound of Zexion’s panting filled the room. “Bring me a towel,” he ordered between breaths. “I need one.” 

Demyx slid off his headphones and headed to the closet by the front door, keeping his eyes away from Zexion as he tiptoed between the beds. He took one of Zexion’s white towels from the shelf above the clothing rack, where Zexion’s ironed and pressed lab coats hung next to Demyx’s fraying band T-shirts. Turning back to deliver the towel took more courage than Demyx wanted to admit.

On the bed, Zexion had rolled onto his back, laying with one knee tented and one arm draped over his midsection. His chest heaved less violently than before. “Well?” he asked Demyx, who was standing in front of the closet and holding the towel like a pizza box in both hands. “Are you going to bring it here?”

Demyx took a step forward. “Do you… I mean, are you going to need anything else?” As he got closer, he noticed a number of things: the blush cast across Zexion’s face, the slackness in Zexion’s movements, the not-quite-sweat drying on Zexion’s inner thighs. He noticed the steady pounding in his own chest as an afterthought. 

Zexion reached for the towel as Demyx approached. His fingers closed languidly on a corner of the fabric. “Give me a minute. I’m operating at half capacity right now.” He wiped his face before draping the towel across his body, gathering its bottom edge between his legs. “How comfortable are you with sensitive items?”

“Pretty comfortable, I guess?” Demyx felt the sensation in his chest graduate to a brutal four-on-the-floor drumbeat. “I’m here to help. Whatever—um, whatever I can do to help,” he amended, a metallic tang stinging at the roof of his mouth. 

Zexion let out a breath. His towel had already dampened in places, absorbing the sweat buildup of several hours. “Under my bed, there’s a wooden box. Open it and give me the biggest item inside. You’ll know it when you see it.”

Demyx patted at the floor under Zexion’s bed until he found the box, cool to the touch and stowed far enough underneath to be safe from prying eyes. He pulled it into the waning daylight from the room’s central window and undid the double-clasp to lift the lid. Inside, he found several phallus-shaped objects wrapped in black microfiber cloths. He picked out the biggest one and unsheathed it.

He gawked at the dildo in his hand. Bright pink and as long as his forearm, it boasted dramatic ribbing along the sides of the shaft and a knot nearly the size of his fist at its base. It jiggled from side to side as Demyx turned it over, marvelling at its girth. “Is it the pink one?” he asked, equal parts confused and intrigued. 

A sigh emanated from the top of the bed. “Yes, that’s the one. Hand it to me.”

Demyx placed the dildo gingerly onto the mattress, then closed and stored the box back under the bed. “Are you gonna use that? Like, soonish?” Heat rose to his cheeks. “I can still leave if you want privacy. I won’t tell anyone you’re… y’know, indisposed.” 

“Demyx, it doesn’t matter. Stay or go. Go, if you’re uncomfortable.” Zexion shifted on the bed out of Demyx’s sight, taking the dildo with him. “I won’t need to use this for another hour or so. My heats tend to hit me in waves,” he added quietly. 

Demyx got to his feet and found Zexion facing the wall, curled on his side and hugging the dildo to his chest. His chin rested against the tip of the shaft. “I feel like I shouldn’t leave you alone,” Demyx said. “At least, not now. What if something happens? You could—”

“Don’t worry about me. Write your essay.” Zexion’s shoulders tensed as he spoke.

“But—”

“ _Demyx.”_

With a nod and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Demyx shuffled back to his desk. “Okay, then. Let me know if you need anything.” Slipping his headphones back over his ears and shooing away his laptop’s screensaver to reveal a half-finished essay draft gave the sinking feeling a sour note of negligence. He turned up the volume of the music and switched to a heavy metal playlist to compensate. 

* * *

Over the next hour, Demyx finished polishing the only-partly-bullshitted thesis of his essay, hoping that the straws at which his argument grasped were coherent enough to slip past the discerning eye of a sleep-deprived teaching assistant. He added extra in-text citations to the more egregious leaps of logic, attached a reference page to the essay draft, and emailed the entire document to his professor, six hours ahead of schedule. He allowed himself a gratuitous stretch in his desk chair as a reward for another deadline thwarted.

Demyx closed his playlist and set his headphones next to his laptop as his arms extended over his desk. “Hey, Zexion, how’s it going over there?” he asked. He laced his fingers behind his head and looked back over his shoulder at Zexion’s bed.

Zexion answered with a low, guttural moan, from somewhere outside of Demyx’s line of sight.

“Zexion?” Demyx swiveled in his seat, his victory over the essay deadline forgotten and the sinking feeling remembered. “Is everything okay?”

On the bed, Zexion lay on his stomach, his face pressed into the mattress and his arms resting limply at his sides. His entire body—neck, shoulders, hips, and legs—boasted the blush-pink cast Demyx had noticed on his face hours earlier. He moaned again, with a deeper diphthong.

Demyx sat upright, planting his feet on the floor. “Is there something I can do?”

“Blanket. I’m cold.” One of Zexion’s feet twitched. “Please.”

Zexion’s comforter lay folded over itself in a pile on the floor at the far edge of his bed. Demyx took a deep breath and got to his feet to retrieve it. The pounding in his chest, absent while he was writing the essay, reasserted itself in full force as he picked up the blanket, shook it out a few times, and hoisted it over the bed. The comforter’s top edge landed just above Zexion’s shoulders. 

“Does that help?” Demyx asked. He crossed his arms to counter the urge to rub Zexion’s back and run his fingers through Zexion’s hair, to sit next to Zexion and offer comforting words and whispers.

Zexion pulled the comforter over his head in a heavy, herculean motion. “No.”

“It doesn’t? I thought you said you were cold.” Demyx stood in place, recrossing his arms in the opposite direction.

“I am, but not in a way that my own body heat can fix.” Zexion fidgeted under the blanket. He sighed. “I’m sorry, I lied. The blanket helps. Just not as much as I need it to.”

“Oh. Well, do you need—”

“Demyx, _stop._ Just stop.” Zexion’s head peeked out from under the comforter in increments, until his eyes and nose were visible from under the molecular diagram for carbon dioxide printed on its edge. “You don’t need to do anything. It’s probably better if you leave before things get worse.”

Demyx cocked his head to the side and tapped one finger on the opposite crossed arm. “Earlier you said I didn’t have to leave if I didn’t want to. Why the sudden tune change?”

“That was then. This is now.”

“What do you mean?”

Zexion hissed through his teeth as his back arched in an involuntary convulsion. He lowered himself slowly. “Listen. In another hour or two, I’m going to be—” His voice caught on another short breath, another spasm in the back. “I’m going to be anyone but myself,” he continued, the muscles in his neck pulled taut. “In all likelihood, you’re going to be anyone but _your_ self. I don’t—” 

Demyx’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m not an Alpha. Or an Omega, even. I thought the whole pheromone thing didn’t affect people outside of the binary.” The monotone voiceover of health classes past returned in his ear: _the phenomenon of Omega heat is largely believed to function solely for mate-pairing and childbearing in the procreating sexes. There is no known analogous experience observed in Betas._

“It happens sometimes. It could be happening now.” Zexion settled again into a prone position, the comforter now bunched at the small of his back. “Have you had any sudden changes in heart rate in the past few hours? Or any changes in thought patterns?” 

Demyx’s gaze swept over Zexion’s exposed torso, his hair, his eyes _—_ how had he never noticed Zexion’s deep blue _eyes_ before?—and fell to the floor. He prayed that Zexion could not sense his heartbeat echoing behind his eardrums in stereophonic sound. “I, uh, kind of want to rub your back. That’s about it.” 

“Dammit.” Zexion’s fingertips grasped at the edges of the comforter, desperate for privacy, but struggled to find purchase on the smooth fabric with their haphazard coordination. He left the comforter in its place and brought one arm over his eyes instead. _“Fuck_ me _.”_

Demyx bit back the nervous laugh bubbling in his throat. At that very moment, the prospect did not sound entirely unappetizing. “You mean literally, or...?” 

“Do you know what will happen if I conceive in the middle of a semester? Or before finishing a degree program, even?” The question hit quickly, like a blow from a sharpened edge.

Demyx flinched at the impact. He opened his mouth to respond, but found he had no answer. The documentary voiceover offered no explanation, hints, or guesses. In place of coherent thoughts spoken in sentences, his throat made confused gagging sounds.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then,” Zexion replied flatly.

The gagging noises stopped. Demyx kept silent.

Zexion repositioned himself with his elbows pulled into his waist, his movements shaky but determined. “University policy would force me to put all coursework on hold indefinitely. Depending on which administrator handles my case, I may not be able to begin classes again until my ‘familial obligations’ are met, if at all.” He winced as a muscle spasm hitched between his shoulder blades. “Do you know what I mean by that?”

Demyx’s eyes drew toward the crack in the wall by Zexion’s headboard. Familial obligations? Like familial leave, the thing schoolteachers took when they were due to have babies? He could remember that his second-grade teacher had gone on familial leave in the middle of the school year, when his stomach stuck out so far that he waddled around the classroom in a way that reminded eight-year-old Demyx of a penguin. The class had a long-term substitute after that. Demyx couldn’t remember if that teacher returned to school the following year. 

“Everything I’ve worked for would be taken from me. Possibly for a few years, possibly for eighteen years, possibly forever.” Zexion spat out the words, every few syllables more bitter than the last. “I’ve come too far and worked too hard to let anything as simple as basic biology derail my plans.”

Demyx regained his voice in hushed tones. “Do you have to worry about that with me?” he asked.

“In a word, yes. Beta-Omega pairings have a 30-45% chance of conceiving when copulating during an Omega heat. The embryo survival rate is about 25% after the first trimester, but by then the damage to my academic career would be done, and irreversible.” Zexion looked up at Demyx, the vitriol draining from his eyes when they met Demyx’s. In its place, remorse emerged. “I did some research when I found out the Department of Student Housing assigned me a Beta roommate instead of the single room I requested.”

Watching Zexion’s anger peter out into something sadder put an ache in Demyx’s chest. It pulled him forward. He almost reached out, almost took Zexion by the hand, and almost brought Zexion’s fingers to his lips. He stopped himself before his arm could do anything without his brain giving it permission. “I guess I should go, then.”

Zexion blinked slowly, catlike. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure you’d handle yourself fairly well under that kind of duress.” 

Demyx gave a solemn nod. The ache in his chest grew harder to ignore. “Okay, I’ll go. Just, before I do, let me just…” He let the weight guide him, take him closer to Zexion’s bed and pull the comforter over Zexion’s shoulders. His hands smoothed the wrinkles from the fabric, paying special attention to the parts of the blanket covering the dips and peaks of Zexion’s back, the places where more spasms might happen. He went over each spot twice, three times, until—

Until he realized what he was doing. Demyx jumped back, his hands flying up into the air. “Sorry! I’m sorry! I wanted you to be warm with your blanket. I didn’t mean to—”

A light sob gasped from under the blanket. “Why did you _do_ that?” a small voice asked.

Panicking, Demyx started to ramble. “I’m so sorry. It just kind of happened, I wasn’t trying to—”

“Why did you _stop?_ ” he whispered, more insistent. Zexion sounded wounded, like a fox caught in a trap.

Demyx’s jaw dropped. “Wait, what do you—”

“Why did you _stop?_ And why did it _feel_ like that?” The questions fired in quick succession, the words tripping over themselves in their efforts to be heard. Zexion’s voice strained against shallow breaths. “I always do this alone. I never have problems. I can _handle_ myself, that’s why they let me into this stupid university in the first place. Why am I—”

Demyx closed his jaw as one of his hands found its way to the spot between Zexion’s shoulders and began rubbing in gentle up-and-down motions. When he saw Zexion relax into the gesture, saw his tightened muscles release and his breathing steady, Demyx renewed his efforts with more intention. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he murmured, close enough for Zexion to hear. “I can stay, if you need me to.”

“It’s because I touched you. When you first came in, I grabbed your hand and didn’t let go quickly enough and now I’m… I’m…” Zexion sighed. “I’m attached. To you, of all people.”

“Am I really that bad? I thought we were cool,” Demyx replied, laughing to himself. His hand moved higher, of its own accord, across a hexagon with capital O’s and H’s at its corners printed on the bedspread. His fingertips brushed against the back of Zexion’s neck, exposed and warm to the touch. Zexion gave a low, guttural hum.

The monotone voiceover droned in Demyx’s ear: _skin-to-skin contact, in particular, causes certain neurochemicals to be released at the time of heat,_ it reminded him. _These neurochemicals play an important role in providing relief from the unpleasant symptoms experienced by the Omega._

“As a roommate, you’re acceptable. I’d rather not think of how you’d rate as a lover.” Zexion’s arms readjusted under the blanket, writhing his trunk closer to Demyx’s touch. He spoke evenly, unhurriedly.

Demyx traced over the wisps of hair at the nape of Zexion’s neck. “No offense, but I think you’re close to finding that out on your own.” He dug his hand into the clumped strands at the thickest part of Zexion’s hair, his fingers moving instinctually in small circles. The feeling of sweat and oil and body heat against his palm made his heartbeat stutter. “Is this okay?” he asked, as he massaged Zexion’s hair between his fingers. “I hope it is, because this is _really_ good for me.”

Zexion choked on a laugh. “I shudder to think how you’ll react when things intensify.”

“Does that mean I can stay?” Demyx’s smile widened.

“Yes, I suppose it does,” Zexion assented. He pushed himself onto his side, pressing up against Demyx’s hand on the back of his head. “In that case, kindly make yourself useful. My apparatus needs to be taken out. I’ve had it in for too long as it is.”

“Apparatus?”

“Yes.” Zexion landed on his back, bouncing slightly on the mattress, just as Demyx pulled his hand out of his hair. “The apparatus.”

A full five seconds later, Demyx’s face lit up in understanding. “Oh. Oh! You mean your dildo. Yeah, dude, I can—” He stopped himself, realizing what Zexion was asking him to do. “Are you sure? That feels like a big step. You could probably just—”

“Demyx, you’ve chosen to stay. You’re going to find out what I look like sooner or later.” Zexion splayed his legs hip-width apart under the blanket, stretching the diagrams of ferrous sulfate and acetic acid as a small section of the comforter followed suit. “More so than you already do, anyway.” 

Demyx found himself reaching for Zexion’s hair again, this time weaving his fingers into asymmetrical bangs. He ruffled the feathered edges and combed through a few of the tangles, captivated by the way each strand of hair reflected the ambient light in a silvery gradient. Once he was satisfied with his primping job, he flipped the hair away from Zexion’s face, revealing a two-eyed scowl hiding underneath. “Well?” Zexion asked, his eyebrows drawing together.

Oh. Right. The dildo. “I have to take your blanket off,” Demyx offered weakly.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

Removing the comforter proved to be more difficult than Demyx anticipated. With every inch of fabric pulled back, gently and carefully by the top edge, another inch of Zexion’s skin appeared. Another inch of sinewed ligaments on tender bones and trembling limbs to be seen, examined, and admired _._ By the time Demyx had the comforter fully removed and bunched at Zexion’s side, his entire body shook from the strain of staying on-task.

Using the lightest touch he could manage, Demyx trailed his hands down Zexion’s waist, one on each side. He followed the curvature of Zexion’s torso to his hips, where the highlights and shadows of bone structure threatened to absorb what was left of his attention. His reverie broke at a rough bump grazing against his left palm, coupled with a sharp inhale from Zexion.

He moved his hand to investigate: something that looked like a raised blister, about an inch across and a half-inch from top to bottom, spread across Zexion’s left hip bone. Demyx gave the spot another brush with his thumb, and Zexion flinched. “Is this…”

Zexion released the breath he was holding. “My scent gland. Don’t touch it.”

Demyx took his hand away. “Does it hurt?”

“It will if you break it.” 

_When the enzymes contained in Alpha saliva break the tender skin of the scent gland, specific hormones are released that reinforce the emotional bond between the Alpha and Omega,_ the voiceover intoned from the depths of Demyx’s memory of health class. _If the scent gland is broken without these hormones, the Omega may experience lasting symptoms of depression, cognitive dissonance, and feelings of isolation._ Demyx felt his cheeks begin to smolder. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch that. I’ve only heard of scent glands being on people’s necks. I didn’t know they could be in other places, too.” 

Zexion shrugged. “They can, though it’s admittedly uncommon. I think its unconventional placement played a role in my acceptance to this university, actually. It promises to be less distracting to the delicate attention spans of the Alpha students.” 

Demyx squinted at the spot on Zexion’s hip. The image of Zexion’s lab uniform popped into his head, a labcoat and dress pants kept immaculately clean. Zexion never left for a day in the laboratory without accessorizing the outfit with an elaborate tie around his neck. “Hold on. If your scent gland is on your leg, why do you wear those weird necktie things all the time?” 

“They’re called ascots, thank you very much,” Zexion scoffed from near his headboard. “Unlike you, some of us have grooming standards for ourselves.”

Demyx rolled his eyes before returning to the task at hand. His hands slid past Zexion’s hips, around Zexion’s full-mast dick, and onto the delicate skin of Zexion’s inner thighs. His eyes, not so tenacious, landed on Zexion’s cock and refused to move. _The Omega’s vestigial penis, while visually similar to its Alpha and Beta counterparts, is not used for penetration,_ the monotone voiceover said as part of its ongoing commentary track, _but may provide added sensation during intercourse when tactilely stimulated. It functions similarly to its counterparts in this regard._

Vestigial or not, its angle looked downright painful. Demyx reached one hand to its base without thinking, gently rubbing the side of his thumb along the lower half of the shaft. The primal part of his brain debated the particulars of going down on Zexion, whether it might help quell a heat erection and whether Zexion would welcome the act. The sensible part of his brain wondered what the hell he was thinking, what the hell he was _doing_ , and why he was enjoying it so much.

Zexion cleared his throat. “Demyx, please focus. If you would be so kind.”

Slightly and inexplicably disappointed, Demyx returned his hands to Zexion’s thighs and eased them wider, just enough to see a shock of bright pink silicone protruding from the center of Zexion’s pelvis. Judging by the way the folds of skin lay around the exposed part of the dildo, a bulb at least three inches in diameter, Zexion had inserted it up to the artificial knot. Demyx gave a low, impressed whistle. “Okay, okay, I’m focused. Now what?”

“Ease it out. Be judicious. Don’t yank. And, for the love of God, don’t ever whistle at me again.”

“Oh, I was just surprised,” Demyx said, the skin around Zexion’s opening giving way to light touch as he pulled the folds apart. “I didn’t know you had it in you. To, uh, use one of these.”

The sound of Zexion’s palm hitting his forehead reverberated along the bare dorm room walls. “Demyx, I am begging you to please, _please_ just finish what you’re doing. Talk to me after my pelvic walls are no longer over-stretched.”

“As you wish, I guess.” Grasping the exposed handle of the dildo in one hand and pulling Zexion apart with the other, Demyx wiggled the dildo in slow circular motions, rolling against the edge’s of Zexion’s opening. Zexion’s breath caught in time with each full rotation. His inner muscles pulsed as Demyx worked the dildo, pulling it out in fits and starts. Squelching spurts of slick accented each of the dildo’s movements until its tip cleared the opening with a final rush of discharge. The shaft and knot were damp with congealed bodily fluids, but otherwise unchanged. Demyx held it up for Zexion to see. “Um, I got it.”

“Great. Good job. Whatever.” Zexion gestured at the floor with one tiny, pained finger-point. “Leave it on the floor. I’ll clean it later.”

Demyx pitched his upper body over the side of the bed and set the dildo on the floor next to the nearest bedpost. The mattress groaned under him as he righted himself, sitting on his haunches and settling in the space between Zexion’s legs. From his vantage point, Demyx could see errant streaks of slick pooling in the crevices of Zexion’s thighs, dripping onto the bedspread in erratic drops. 

All at once, a thick, bodied musk hit Demyx’s nose. Pungent and all-encompassing, but not entirely off-putting. Like the scent of a rare mushroom sauteed in a rarer blend of spices, Demyx mused. He stared at the drying and re-applying streaks of slick on Zexion’s skin. Would they taste anything like a truffle, he wondered? Was it worth finding out?

Zexion’s legs shuffled uncomfortably under Demyx’s gaze. “What are you looking at?” he demanded, an edge in his voice.

The scent grew stronger, and Demyx’s reservations faltered. He rested his thumb against Zexion’s opening, this time pulling at the folds with conscious intent. “I want to kiss you, I think,” he confessed. “Here.”

 _“No!”_ Zexion snapped his knees together, quickly and forcefully enough to hold Demyx’s arm firmly between them. “No tongues there. No. Hard limit.”

Demyx wrenched his arm away, and Zexion’s legs released their grip. He slipped it back into his lap. The musky scent lingered, but Demyx’s embarrassment tempered its allure. “I’m sorry. I’m new at this.”

“New to heat sex? Or sex in general?”

The heat rushing to Demyx’s cheeks chased away any coherent responses he may have given. How could he admit to Zexion that he had always been the only Beta in rooms full of Alpha and Omega classmates, where his gangly limbs and weird preoccupation with music theory kept him on the outskirts of the social sphere even before dating became the norm? Thinking back to lunch periods spent sitting at the corner of a vaguely-hostile table and after-school hours spent alone reading sheet music in the band room made his palms sweat. He wiped them on the mattress surreptitiously. 

“Either way, I suppose we should set some ground rules before we lose ourselves completely,” Zexion said. He propped himself on his elbows and levelled his gaze at Demyx from over his tented knees. “Firstly, no tongues. I hate tongues.” He tilted his head to the side, indicating a count of one. “Secondly, your penis is not to come anywhere near me, orifices or otherwise.” His head tilted to the opposite side, signalling a count of two. “Thirdly…” He paused, sighed, and dropped his head toward his chest. “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable doing under normal circumstances. Neither of us would enjoy that.”

Demyx’s entire face flared several degrees hotter. “What if I… don’t know what I’m comfortable with?” he asked.

“You don’t… know?” Zexion brought his eyes back to Demyx’s, confusion transitioning to exasperation as he read the story written in Demyx’s expression. He grimaced. “You picked a very bad time to have your sexual awakening.”

“Hey, man, I’ve been awake for a while. Just haven’t… gotten around to doing anything, that’s all.” Demyx crossed his arms and turned away from Zexion, trying not to pout too obviously.

“Fine. Godspeed.” Zexion released his elbows and flopped onto his back. “Just avoid tongues and penile penetration. Whatever else is up to you.”

Demyx worried at the inside of his lip as he considered what Zexion meant. What _would_ he be comfortable doing, under normal circumstances? How much of his recent impulses—the back-rubbing, hair-combing, attempted-fellating—originated from himself, and how much of them sprang forth only because he had spent the past few hours breathing in Zexion’s sex-smell while he was trying to power through writing an essay? The two possibilities, alike in majesty and tangled together in reinforced sailor’s knots, sent his head spinning and his heart drum-rolling in his rib cage. “What should I do in the meantime?” he managed to ask.

Zexion huffed at the question. “I don’t care. Lay with me, if you’re so inclined.” In slow, drawn-out movements, Zexion rearranged himself on the bed, opening a space for Demyx beside him. “I’m going to sleep until the final wave hits me.” 

Just as slowly, Demyx maneuvered into the open space, careful not to jostle Zexion while he coordinated the folding of his arms and legs into something resembling a comfortable position. The back of his mind screamed at him to pull Zexion close, to bury his face in Zexion’s sweaty, oily hair and drink in his body heat through his own exposed skin. His sense of decorum, equally intense, begged him to maintain composure. As a compromise, he laid on his back with his hands folded across his chest. He crossed his legs at the ankle for good measure. “I should probably get some sleep, too. I hear heat sex is pretty labor-intensive.”

Zexion glanced at Demyx, side-eyeing his folded hands. “You’re not going to fall asleep like that.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You usually starfish when you sleep.” Zexion brought a hand to Demyx’s elbow and pulled lightly, a pained expression flashing briefly on his face. “Here. At least _try_ to relax.”

Demyx let his arms drop to his sides as Zexion shifted closer to him, close enough to rest his head on Demyx’s shoulder and slide his forearm under Demyx’s shirt to lay flush against his chest. Demyx demurred at the hand now resting in his chest hair, wispy and thin but still very much _there_ and less than well-groomed. He compensated by curling an arm around Zexion’s midsection. Just as a distraction, Demyx told himself. Just so Zexion didn’t realize how grosshis body was, now that he was close enough to touch it.

Zexion caressed Demyx’s chest with methodical fingers, swirling around chest hair as often as stroking across skin. His mouth parted slightly as his fingers explored. “It’s not starfishing, but it’s more comfortable than laying like an embalmed corpse, I think,” he mumbled. His forehead nestled into the crook of Demyx’s neck. “ _Is_ this comfortable for you? I made an assumption.”

Demyx returned the favor by smothering the burning in his cheeks in Zexion’s hair, the tip of his nose brushing along Zexion’s scalp. It smelled like dead skin and bits of dried, days-old shampoo. The scent cordially offered to consume him. “I love this,” he said into Zexion’s bangs, without thinking.

“Careful,” Zexion chided, while a suppressed yawn broke free and gave the single word a wide range of vowels. “If you say things like that enough, you might start to believe them.”

Demyx waited for Zexion’s breathing to steady, for Zexion’s hand to lay flat on his chest, before answering. He pressed his lips into Zexion’s hair, a freeing and radical act that made his soul soar over the confines of the twin-sized bed they now shared. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Too late.”

* * *

Demyx jolted awake to the sensation of taloned nails clawing at his chest. He felt them burrowing in a half-circle at his sternum and slowly scraping down to his stomach, as if attempting to draw strength from an ephemeral substance hiding just below his skin. In his ear, Zexion’s breathing strained through gritted teeth, accompanied by low moans burbling in the back of Zexion’s throat. The cadence of the breaths quickened when Zexion saw that Demyx had opened his eyes.

Zexion took in a single gasp against the rhythm of his lungs. “Help,” he croaked out, his voice gutted and unrecognizable.

Demyx let his free hand wander back into Zexion’s hair, pushing stray strands away from Zexion’s face and massaging the scalp near the hairline. “I’m here,” he said. “How do I help?”

“What? How do you _think?”_ Zexion’s nails locked onto Demyx’s arm and sank into flesh just below the shoulder. He jerked Demyx’s arm downward, landing himself on his back and placing Demyx squarely on top of him. “Do your fucking _job_.”

Demyx grunted, suddenly very aware that his hips were now mere inches away from Zexion’s opening. That Zexion had _put_ his hips in that position. A fucking job. No kidding. “You have to let go of me first. That hurts.”

“Demyx, _please._ ” The nails dug further into skin. The moans graduated into wails. “Please, Demyx, just— _please—”_

_“Zexion!”_

The name hit the room like a mallet to a gong, and the sound resonated in the air for several seconds before fading. Zexion, blinking and bewildered, dropped his clawed hand to the mattress. He looked up at Demyx expectantly, his pupils expanded as wide as his irises. “Yes?”

Demyx sighed. “I’m here. I can help. Please don’t scratch me.”

Zexion’s eyes watered at the edges, but never wavered from Demyx’s. He nodded. His tongue poked out and receded as he bit his bottom lip.

“I’m going to get started, okay?” Demyx continued, his hands splayed on Zexion’s chest. He hoped that Zexion couldn’t tell that his arms were shaking. “No tongue, no dick, right?”

Zexion arched into Demyx’s touch. 

“Ah. I guess that’s a yes. Okay, then. Here we go.” 

Demyx dragged his hands down Zexion’s chest to rest on his stomach, his thumbs and forefingers forming a circle around Zexion’s navel. On the left side, Demyx caught sight of Zexion’s scent gland, more swollen and more tempting than an hour before. It would be so easy to reach over, skim across the blister, prod around the skin. Maybe it would break. Maybe, by some miracle, Zexion would bond to him. Or maybe, with enough luck, they would bond to each other.

Demyx snapped back to attention at a series of melismatic whines from high in Zexion’s register. The translation: “Quit stalling. Finish what you started.”

“Right. Sorry. I’m focusing.” He dipped his hands between Zexion’s thighs and pushed gently. Zexion accepted the gesture and rolled his hips open, his legs spreading apart with his knees bent. 

Another wave of musk slammed into Demyx’s nose, likely a product of the wet spot below Zexion on the bed. His tongue could taste the overwhelming scent of mushrooms, and he wondered again if trying Zexion’s slick would be anything like trying high-end truffle oil. “Doesn’t matter. No tongue, no dick,” Demyx reminded himself.

Zexion whimpered at the head of the bed. His thigh muscles contracted in automatic, dramatic spasms, and a line of fluid trickled anew onto the bedspread. “Demyx, _please.”_

Demyx stared at Zexion for a moment. With his skin flushed and sweating, legs open, and eyes glazed over to the side, Zexion looked like a debauched Victorian debutante, undersexed and recovering from a bad fainting spell on her wedding night. 

Oral sex was out of the question, as was any position involving the use of Demyx’s cock. The dildo Zexion had used before probably needed to be cleaned before it could be used again safely. There was a box of unused sex toys under the bed, but since Zexion has already used the biggest one, none of the remaining toys would be large enough to help. Demyx squeezed his eyes shut and wracked his brain. If not tongue and dick, then what?

Whimpering sounds continued to fill the room, ranging from urgent to suppliant and punctuated by Demyx’s name called out in frantic cries. There was no time for deliberation, Demyx realized. Whatever needed to happen, it needed to happen _now._

In the absence of tools, Demyx brought one hand to the opening between Zexion’s thighs. His thumb and forefinger found purchase in the folds of skin on either side, and they pulled Zexion open with ease. Zexion’s hips bucked at the touch, welcoming it. Fresh slick travelled onto the bed and onto Demyx’s occupied hand.

One of Demyx’s fingers slipped into the opening as Zexion’s hips continued to pump against his hand. It caught against the ventral pelvic bone, right at the top of Zexion’s opening, and Demyx’s heart jumped into his throat when he heard Zexion gasp. “Is this okay?” he asked, pressing more firmly against the bone.

Zexion’s toes curled on the mattress. “ _Yes,_ ” he pleaded. “Do _that._ ”

“Alright, let me switch hands. I feel like I’m going to need both of them.” Demyx returned his thumb and forefinger to the folds at the edge of Zexion’s opening, pulling him apart again without resistance. He hooked the thumb of his free hand inside the slackened opening and into the spot under Zexion’s pelvic bone, rubbing back and forth with tiny flexes of his thumb joint. Zexion’s breath hitched in response, and another spurt of fluid spilled over Demyx’s fingers.

Within minutes, Zexion lay incoherent on the bed, desperately grinding on Demyx’s thumb and speaking in half-formed, half-articulated monosyllables. Demyx pressed harder, pushing his entire arm forward for enough leverage to match Zexion’s vigor, but found himself lagging behind. Zexion was expanding too much, becoming too pliable for one finger to sate a drive meant for an Alpha cock and an Alpha knot. He would need more girth for his plan to work.

Demyx swallowed the nervous lump in his throat and set to work, turning his hand slightly to fit his index finger next to his thumb inside of Zexion. He prodded at the side wall deliberately, both fingers kneading into the flesh as it gave way. Zexion hummed his approval and rocked himself into Demyx’s advances. 

The third, fourth, and fifth fingers slipped inside easily, one after another. Demyx quickly fell in time with Zexion’s circling hips, and each pulse landed in-tempo led to a wider expansion and another shot of lubricating slick. Their coordinated movements, in tandem with Zexion’s newfound elasticity, sent Demyx deeper inside. He held back a laugh when his entire hand fit into the opening, right up to the wrist, with more room to spare. No wonder Zexion needed an entire collection of dildos. He certainly had space for them.

Zexion’s inner muscles eagerly contracted and suctioned his arm into the slicked, inviting cavity. An unbidden exclamation escaped on Demyx’s tongue when a particularly strong contraction swallowed a good chunk of his forearm. His cock, once an afterthought, now stood fully erect in the crotch of his sweatpants, demanding his immediate attention. “Not now,” he spat at himself. “Stay focused.”

While his arm worked its way inward, Demyx’s gaze fell on Zexion’s dick, still stuck at an uncomfortable angle and visibly throbbing in the open air. His free hand reached for it out of sympathy, and his unoccupied fingers began to rub light, leisurely circles around its base. As thanks, Zexion’s muscles pulled Demyx further inside, and Zexion himself called out an uninhibited string of expletives.

Light circles evolved into heavy strokes along the shaft as Demyx repositioned himself on the bed, his knees squaring under his shoulders and upper body angling to allow more of his arm to fit inside of Zexion. The muscles squeezing his arm doubled their efforts to draw him inside. Demyx responded in kind, his own pants and grunts mixing with Zexion’s mewling cries to create a synchronous, atonal polyphony. He adjusted his stance, pushing and stroking and heaving as deeply and quickly and loudly as possible, as though this one act was his purpose, and he would never need to accomplish anything else ever again. All his other thoughts, his anxieties and insecurities, fell away in that moment.

They returned when Zexion’s entire body convulsed around his arm. 

At first, Demyx only noticed Zexion’s throat-noises coming in quick and furious succession as the muscles within Zexion swallowed his forearm up to the elbow. The task at hand had inundated his other senses with the scent of sweat, the sensation of warm skin, and the vision that was Zexion, naked and blushing and radiant next to his comforter covered in diagrammed molecules. It eclipsed everything else, a bright starburst in black space.

Then it ended. Zexion orgasmed, trapping Demyx’s arm in his pelvic cavity until his muscles relaxed. Demyx shook back to his senses, now acutely aware that he was _stuck_ inside Zexion for the next who-knew-how-long. The thought of losing circulation in that arm blared like a siren in his mind. Would he lose that arm? Was that even possible? How would he play guitar or piano or ukulele with only one arm? Would he have to change his major? 

Zexion cleared his throat, interrupting Demyx’s train of thought. “Rather satisfactory, for a first try,” he said. Though his eyelids drooped, he spoke clearly.

Demyx took stock of himself. His clothes were rumpled, damp with perspiration of indeterminate origin. His sweatpants, no longer tented, boasted a peculiar damp spot where his erection had been. He adjusted the waistband of his pants to conceal the spot, but only succeeded in moving it an inch to the left. “I was?” 

A broad grin spread across Zexion’s face. “Yes, of course. You set the bar.”

Demyx’s stomach flipped at the compliment. He returned the grin. “I did?” 

“You did.” Zexion cupped a hand over his mouth and swallowed a yawn. “The best and only, in fact.”

“The only? As in… the first?”

Zexion nodded. His chest rose and fell evenly, and his eyelids fluttered closed. “The first.” 

The muscles holding Demyx’s arm in place loosened as Zexion fell asleep, and before long Demyx was able to wriggle himself free without waking Zexion. Save for several small bruises dotting along the central tendon and a congealed coating of slick, his arm appeared no worse for wear. He wiped the slick off on the nearest corner of Zexion’s comforter and wiggled the blood flow back into his fingers.

Zexion lay on his back with his head lolling to the side and his arms open, his body on full display in the lamplight that was entirely too bright for sleeping after sex. Demyx rose and turned off the light before sidling into the crook of Zexion’s shoulder, throwing his wiped-off arm across Zexion’s abdomen and resting his forehead just below Zexion’s collarbone. He closed his eyes, timed his breathing to Zexion’s heartbeat, and drifted deeply into the warmth. 

* * *

Demyx woke to late-morning sunshine and a cool mattress beneath him, alone. He inhaled sharply as his hands moved to protect his eyes from the light and his knees drew into his chest. His legs shivered in the absence of a bedmate and a blanket. Behind him, someone rustled the clothes hanging in the closet.

He pulled his hands away from his face and saw Zexion standing in front of the mirror mounted on the closet door, fussing at the top buttons of his lab coat. Demyx swallowed against his dry throat. “Hey,” he said, more hoarsely than sultry.

Zexion raised an eyebrow at Demyx in the mirror. A collared dress shirt and a scratchy-looking sweater vest poked out from the wide neckline of the lab coat, and a pair of gray dress slacks extended past its bottom hem. His hair, no longer clumped in thick strands, fluffed over one side of his face. “Oh, you’re awake.” Zexion secured the final button on his lab coat and adjusted his ascot in the mirror. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d slipped into a coma.”

The remnants of the night before weighed in Demyx’s muscles and fogged his morning thoughts. They slowed his train of thought to a standstill. “Wait, where are you going?” he asked through the haze.

“To class. I have a lab report due tomorrow. I would have had it done yesterday, but...” Zexion trailed off, giving his ascot a final tug before picking up his briefcase from its place by the door. “You’re aware of what that situation was, if I’m not mistaken.”

Demyx rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. “Yeah. The… situation. That we… had.” The pounding in his head, steady as a metronome, kept the pieces of Zexion’s meaning from falling into place. “What does that mean, again?”

Zexion paused in front of the mirror, briefcase in hand. He glanced at Demyx over his shoulder, his grip tightening on the briefcase handle. “For your purposes, it means that we do not speak of it again. Is that clear?”

Demyx let his eyes close and laid back on the bed. “Right. No tongues, no dicks, no speaking of it. Got it.” He opened his eyes a few seconds later to see Zexion standing over him, his bag still clutched by the handle in a shaking fist. 

Zexion’s jaw clenched. “Nothing that transpired here last night _ever_ leaves this room,” he said. “Is that understood?” 

Demyx’s eyes darted back and forth as he searched Zexion’s face, his absurdly-layered outfit, his pretentious briefcase, and his stupid fluffy hair for any sign of their mutual encounter from the night before. He only found tight-lipped condescension and barely-contained disgust. “Yeah, okay.” Saying the words out loud cut deeper than he expected.

Zexion’s upper lip twisted into a sneer as Demyx continued to scan him in disjointed chunks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Demyx’s gaze fell away from Zexion, to the floor. His spirit followed shortly after. “I had a good time last night,” he admitted.

“Good for you.” 

“I would, um. I’d be happy to do it again sometime. If you, y’know, needed it.” Demyx fixated on a knot in the wooden floor paneling next to the posts of his own bed, to avoid Zexion’s unyielding scowl as much as to distract himself from the nerves jittering around his mind’s edges. He laid his heart on his sleeve like a gurney. His other organs rested in easy reach. 

Zexion’s expression darkened. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer if we never found ourselves in those particular positions again.”

“What about other positions?” The question left Demyx’s mouth before he could catch it, shoving him straight into open water. He wished he knew how to swim.

“Demyx.” Zexion stood still for a moment, then placed a hand on Demyx’s head. His fingers combed through Demyx’s bangs, pushing them backward and scratching at the scalp with his nails. “Take a shower. You’re disgusting. And make sure to change the sheets on my bed, since you’re the reason they’re so uncomely.” He took his hand out of Demyx’s hair and shook it. “And the next time you think to put your entire arm into someone else, have the decency to wear a rubber glove.”

Zexion turned and walked out the door without another word, his briefcase glued to his side. The door clicked closed and locked behind him. The encroaching silence hit like a hammer, point-blank, on Demyx’s chest.

Demyx remained in Zexion’s bed, anchored on his back. In his mind, he ran through every step needed to get out of bed, wash the night off, and otherwise regain his dignity with every intention of completing those steps, but the weight of his sore muscles and aching joints held him in place. Something inside his chest had cracked and collapsed into itself, leaving him hollow and drained. 

In lieu of starting the day, Demyx wrapped himself in Zexion’s comforter, which had been relegated to a corner of the bed sometime during the night. It smelled like the Zexion from the night before, a mixture of sweat and slick and moaning and skin, in contrast to the Zexion of the morning, who probably smelled like unscented soap and laundry starch. Demyx buried his nose into the fabric and shooed away thoughts of the class he missed that morning and the other classes he would miss that afternoon. For the time being, he resolved to study the night before, to commit its every bullet point to memory. 

* * *

Demyx had spent an hour laying in his own bed by the time Zexion returned to their dorm room later that day. He had somehow mustered the energy to shower, change Zexion’s bed linens (out of courtesy), and clean up the stray empty water bottles lying around the room while Zexion was in class, but now found himself unable to do much more than stare at the ceiling and listen to sad vocalists sing sadder songs straight into his ear. The door opened just as a weepy ballad faded to its final chord in Demyx’s headphones.

Zexion walked straight to his own bed and set his briefcase on the fresh sheets Demyx had chosen, the ones with the tiny diagrams of plant cells tesselating in an intricate mosaic pattern. With his back turned to Demyx, he opened the locks on either side of the briefcase. His shoulders bobbed slightly as he rifled through the papers inside the bag.

Demyx paused his music and listened to Zexion arrange his note-sheets for a few seconds, vibrating in the calm before forcing himself into the storm head-first. “Hey.”

“Hello.” Zexion did not turn around.

A less-than-friendly response, but not entirely unworkable. Demyx took a deep breath and pressed onward. “How was your day?” he asked, as casually as he could manage.

“Adequate.” 

“What are you doing now?”

Zexion’s papers made louder noises as he removed them from the briefcase and flipped through them in his hands, apparently arranging them in some sort of order. “I’m going to type up my lab report from my notes.”

“Oh, okay. That sounds, uh, responsible.” Demyx cringed at his choice of words. Awkward. He slid his headphones off of his ears. His thumbs worried at the places where some of the plastic pieces separated from each other from old age and temperature fluctuations. “Hey, Zexion?”

Zexion sighed, a grumble in his chest. “Yes?”

“Did I do something wrong last night?” The plastic pieces of the headphones clicked together and apart in Demyx’s shaking hands. He twisted the cord around his index finger, looping it clockwise and criss-crossing the extra lead in a double helix pattern. “Did I do something badly?”

“Are you still on about that?” The papers shuffled more vigorously.

Demyx rolled to his side, his headphones held close to his chest. “I thought… I thought it was okay,” he said to Zexion’s back. “I thought I did okay, anyway. Was I wrong?” 

The edges of Zexion’s notes crumpled in his grip. He turned and addressed Demyx directly, with his face angled in a way that suggested anger. “Demyx, the person you met last night only exists a few times a year. The person who exists in the interim—”

“Is you.” Demyx sat up, rising to meet Zexion’s eyes and bringing his headphones into his lap. What initially appeared to be animosity in Zexion’s expression morphed into something less aggressive when their eyelines equalized. Defensiveness, maybe, or wariness, or fear. “I… I liked that part of you, from last night. I think I’ll like the rest of you, too.” He unwound the headphones cord from his finger and redid the loop. “I’d like to have the opportunity to find out, anyway.”

A hush spread between them, disturbed only by the white noise from the central heat vents on the ceiling. After a moment, Zexion balled his fists at his sides, papers still in hand. “I don’t think you understand,” he said.

“No, I don’t.” Demyx set his headphones aside on the bed and let out a breath. “Tell me what I’m missing.” 

The room fell silent again. “It’s not you. It’s…” Zexion hesitated, crossing and uncrossing his arms until they settled akimbo on his hips. He closed his eyes and sighed. “Outside of my heat cycles, I don’t experience what you’re experiencing right now. Do you understand?”

It struck Demyx like a pin deflating a balloon. “You don’t like me.”

“Not in the same sense. Though I don’t like anyone in that sense.” Zexion’s shoulders slumped, His hair fell to obscure his face. “It’s not you. You did everything you could last night. Correctly, aside from the missing rubber glove.”

“You never told me about the glove thing.”

“Forgive me. I wasn’t in my right mind.” Zexion chuckled from under his bangs.

Demyx cracked a smile. Sunlight streamed in through the slats of the closed blinds on the windows, and the heaviness dissipated from the room. “So… where do we go from here?” 

Zexion relaxed his arms as he finished laughing, though his papers still crinkled in his fists. “I’m going to write a lab report,” he said. “You’re welcome to conduct yourself as you see fit, provided that boundaries are respected.”

Demyx beamed. “Sounds good,” he replied, reaching for his headphones and slipping them back over his ears. “Let me know if you need me.”

Chipper ukulele accompaniments and brightly-sung vowels replaced the acoustic guitars and nasal warbling in Demyx’s headphones with a few taps on his phone screen. He lowered the volume on his phone so that the sounds of Zexion’s typing muddied at the backbeats of his music, then pulled out a battered notebook and a mechanical pencil from his backpack at the foot of his bed. As a folk chanteuse with an accent waxed poetic about love lost, he set his pencil to the paper, sketching the melody line and shading in the harmony on the page.

Graphite lines filled the page to its margins with streaks, circles, and crosshatches while Demyx split his attention between the music and the clicking of Zexion’s keyboard. Zexion typed at a steady clip, speeding up more frequently than he slowed down. Demyx lifted his pencil from the paper and glanced at Zexion’s computer screen. Words overtook the word processing document like a contagion spreading in a contained population. 

“Hey, Zexion?” Demyx ventured, sliding one speaker off of his ear.

“Yes?” Zexion typed without pause.

“What’s your boundary on getting coffee later tonight?”

“Caffeine will perpetuate the disruption in my sleeping schedule. Also, I’m not comfortable accepting gifts from strangers.” The clicking of the keyboard accelerated as Zexion spoke.

Demyx flipped to a clean page in his notebook and pointed in Zexion’s direction with the pencil. “What about pizza or something? We could split the bill.”

The typing sounds clattered to a halt. “Why are you asking about coffee and pizza?” Zexion asked in a low voice. 

“Nothing crazy,” Demyx said, returning to the blank page. He looped across the top margin in long pencil-strokes as a progression of dominant-seventh chords announced itself in his headphone’s speakers. “I just figure we both need to decompress a bit, is all.”

“I’m not interested in going on a date with you, Demyx. Please drop the pretense.” 

A trio of strings joined the progression. Demyx shaded the underside of the looping lines with short, slanted hash marks and tried not to let slip the dejected hum itching at the back of his throat. “Ouch. Message received, I guess.”

“Thank you.” Zexion’s keyboard clicked back to overproductive life. Each keystroke slashed into the atmosphere of the room, letting out all the air through wide, serrated gashes.

When he could no longer breathe, Demyx turned off the music and shoved his notebook and headphones into his backpack. His phone slid into its usual post in his pants’ front-right pocket after he shouldered his bag and got to his feet. “I’m going out,” he said, padding to the door.

With one hand on the door handle, Demyx stopped himself. He looked back at Zexion, whose typing continued in rapid staccato bursts and whose attention remained zeroed into the growing lines of text on the computer screen. He opened the door in one grand swoop, and shut it slowly as he left. 

He returned to his dorm room an hour and a half later with a travel cup of gas station coffee in each hand and a medium-sized bag of off-brand potato chips nestled in one elbow. Zexion’s keyboard still clacked loudly and ferociously when Demyx hip-checked the door open and dropped the spoils of his excursion onto his own desk. He had just enough room to pull his chair out and sit comfortably without knocking into Zexion, whose desk was cater-cornered to his own. 

Demyx took the first coffee cup, marked “DECAF” in black marker on its cardboard sleeve, and placed it next to Zexion’s keyboard on the desk. Zexion’s typing rhythm faltered but did not fall apart, and Zexion spun back to full speed in a matter of seconds. 

Undeterred, Demyx popped open the bag of chips, leaving the open end facing Zexion. He snuck a potato chip from the top of the bag and flicked it into his mouth conspicuously. “I got snacks,” he said, in between chews. “You can have some if you want.”

“Thanks. Not right now.” Zexion kept typing.

The text on Zexion’s screen trailed across the page, heedless in its conquering of the white space on the screen. From up close, Demyx saw that Zexion was typing in a basic word processing document, without data tables or graphs or any other extra elements he usually noticed in Zexion’s lab reports. Demyx picked out another potato chip from the bag. “What are you writing? I _know_ your lab reports don’t take this long.”

“I finished my lab report ages ago,” Zexion said sternly. “I submitted it before you left.”

“What are you working on now?” Demyx craned his neck to peer over Zexion’s shoulder. He caught fragments of the writing in mismatched phrases as it spilled from one page to another: _There is something… for whatever reason, I find… The reality of the matter is..._

Zexion scooted his chair to the side so that his body blocked Demyx’s sightline. “Keep reading over my shoulder and I may destroy the evidence before you can find out.”

Demyx settled back into his own chair and averted his eyes to the window in the nearest corner of the room. He reached for his own coffee, adorned with checkmarks in the circles next to ‘milk,’ ‘sugar,’ and ‘hazelnut’ on the side label of the cup, and sipped dolefully. “Sorry. I was just curious.”

A lull in conversation settled around them, until Zexion’s ever-present keystrokes slowed to a stop. He hit a few keys to save the document, then dropped his hands into his lap. “If you must know,” he said, “I was writing a journal entry. I log my heat experiences to better track my cycles across years.”

“Oh?” Demyx almost choked on his coffee. He played it off as a cough and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Anything about me in there?” 

Zexion snickered. He scrolled through the document, revealing pages of thorough introspection committed to digital paper. “Quite a bit, actually. I feel I’ve captured your essence in great detail.” He closed the file and shut his laptop. “I think I’ve recorded everything necessary for an accurate recounting of events.”

Demyx pointed to the open bag of chips in offering. Zexion nodded and retrieved a single chip from the bag. He held it in front of his face and frowned at it. “I feel I’ve been too harsh with you today,” he said, to the chip as much as to Demyx.

Demyx reached into the chip bag, hoping to appear nonchalant. “Yeah, I’ll say. It’s whatever, though. Don’t worry about it.”

Zexion shook his head. “While it’s true that I am not sexually interested in you, I must acknowledge that you performed admirably in my time of need, to your own detriment.” He nibbled at the potato chip in his hand, then ate the rest of it in one bite. “Thank you for staying with me last night.”

Heat rose to Demyx’s cheeks once again, awakening butterflies in his stomach. His hand snaked to the nape of his neck. “You’re welcome—I mean, no sweat. Happy to help.”

Zexion nodded, staring intently at his feet. “I apologize for my impropriety this morning. I am not accustomed to…”

“Waking up with someone?” Demyx took another chip from the bag and another swig of his coffee, his movements reckless with self-conscious abandon. “It’s cool, me neither.”

“I am not accustomed to the people around me knowing what you now know,” he corrected. Zexion cradled his coffee cup with interlaced fingers, holding it just below his chin. “It’s not something I advertise.”

Demyx processed Zexion’s words in waves, as if they were rocks sinking deeper into mud after being chucked off the side of a footbridge. Once several seconds had passed and he mostly understood, he gestured at Zexion with his coffee cup. “It’s cool. Really.”

“This is not a proposition.” Zexion punctuated himself with a loud gulp from his drink. 

Demyx slurped from his own cup. “Yeah?”

“But, if on another unlucky occasion, we find ourselves in a similar position…” Zexion turned his head, his bangs draped over both of his eyes. “I think… I would rather keep the experience between us.”

Demyx put conscious effort into keeping his jaw from slamming into the floor. “Wait, so you—”

The explanation came like a hurried, shameful confession. “If you’re comfortable with that. It’s not ideal for you, but I don’t intend to influence your romantic life beyond what I’m suggesting.”

“I…” Demyx stumbled over his thoughts as he tried to complete them. Romantic life? What romantic life? Would he even want a romantic life, if he was with Zexion? He wouldn’t _be_ with Zexion, not in a romantic-relationship sense, but they would still be together, at least sometimes. Would ‘sometimes’ be better than ‘no times,’ if ‘all the time’ might never be an option? Would ‘sometimes’ with Zexion make him happier than ‘all the time’ with someone else? Would he ever know if he didn’t try? “Wow. Zexion, I would—I’d be honored.”

Zexion looked up at Demyx. He tilted his head to the side and made a face not unlike a schoolteacher grading a test with no correct answers written on it. “You’d be… honored?”

Demyx shrugged and shied into his seat. He sought refuge at the bottom of the chip bag with one hand. “Well, yeah, of course. You’re _way_ out of my league, dude.”

Zexion replied with silence, then with the sounds of drinking and deep breathing. Finally, he spoke. “...Thank you, Demyx.”

“Don’t mention it.” Demyx relaxed in his chair, one of his legs extending to plant the sole of his foot against the wall underneath his desk. “Anytime.”

“No, not anytime. Only when absolutely necessary,” Zexion scoffed, half-facetious. 

The pedantry coaxed a smile from the sides of Demyx’s mouth. “Right, of course. Strictly on an as-needed basis.”

“Don’t make me rethink my offer.”

Demyx waved a hand in front of his face in acquiescence and turned to face the window. He watched the sun, golden and lazy at the end of its shift, slowly sink below the roofs of the campus buildings outside the dormitory. He stole a glance at Zexion beside him, who had his coffee cup placed back on his desk and his eyes trained on the horizon in the window. He reached for Zexion’s hand, his own palm warm and only slightly sweaty. Zexion wove his fingers into Demyx’s without a word.

Demyx gave Zexion’s hand a small squeeze. The fading daylight cast warm shadows on Zexion’s face in the places where his hard edges softened and his eyelashes met his cheeks. Demyx’s heart swelled. He was there, in that moment, anchored in space and frozen in time, with Zexion. His first, his best, and his only. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first Zemyx I've written in over a decade. I started this fic in quarantine, but it quickly expanded past my initial PWP idea and became a monster of a one-shot, three months in the making. 
> 
> I hope it was worth the wait!


End file.
